G.G. on the Job

A horse-drawn landau, preceded by 22 lance-bearing Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen, wheeled one afternoon last week through the gates of Parliament Hill in Ottawa. A guard of honor, red jackets snug in the nippy 25DEG wind, clicked to attention; half a mile away artillerymen fired off the first booming 105-mm shot of their 21-gun salute.

The form of the ceremony was nearly as old as Parliament itself, but the man so honored was new. Resplendent in his red-and-silver-trimmed black uniform, tall, courtly Governor General George Philias Vanier, 71, first French Canadian to serve as the Queen's Viceroy in Canada (TIME, Sept. 21), had arrived to open Parliament. In the crowded Senate chamber, he read his first Speech from the Throne. By his side, regal in red velvet and diamonds, was his handsome wife Pauline.

The speech, actually written by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, outlined an agenda for the third session of Canada's 24th Parliament. With his unbeatable conservative majority (208 of the 265 Commons seats), Diefenbaker could undoubtedly ram through virtually any law he wanted, but in prosperous Canada the Prime Minister wants no drastic changes. The speech's most talk-stirring feature was what it left out: for the first time since the Korean war began, Canada's armed forces went unmentioned. Instead, Vanier read--in both English and French --of the government's hope for a "controlled disarmament" in the world, which will let the cost-conscious Diefenbaker slice into Canada's heavy ($1.7 billion in fiscal 1959) defense budget. Sample of the other proposals: old-age and veterans' benefits to citizens living outside Canada--so that retired Canadians can escape the winter in, say, Florida.

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